Charles, a 33-year-old father of a family who is a refugee at Pulka in Nigeria’s Borno State. / Credit: Aid to the Church in Need
Nairobi, Kenya, Dec 15, 2021 / 13:48 pm (CNA).
Not every Catholic priest risks mortal danger every time he visits his people. But a priest identified only as Father Christopher, who ministers in the Diocese of Maiduguri in Nigeria, risks his life daily to serve hundreds of refugees who have been displaced by terrorism.
The priest told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) United States, a Catholic Pontifical charity foundation, last week that thousands of people who have been displaced by the Boko Haram terrorist group in Northern Nigeria are forced to live as refugees in tents, scattered around the small town of Pulka.
The priest noted that the refugees cannot stray far from the camps because of security concerns, and because of the difficulties in moving around during the rainy season. The town is located close to the border with Cameroon and some 75 miles from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in Northeast Nigeria.
“There are continuing attacks, and some people get killed. It is by no means easy, and it is not easy for me either, simply getting here,” Father Christopher told ACN.
“Coming and going is always a risk, but it is important to me to do everything I can to help these people.”
Father Christopher himself is currently living in an abandoned house, since Boko Haram destroyed his church and the rectory in Pulka in 2014, ACN reports.
ACN reports that many of the victims of Boko Haram’s campaigns of violence are still refugees in their own country, and face daily trauma and anxiety. There are some 30,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Pulka alone.
“The danger has not passed, but the Church is bringing them consolation and hope,” the foundation says.
The foundation recounts the story of Naomi, a Nigerian woman who watched as her mother was killed and at one point was forced to “marry” a terrorist after being abducted. The image of Boko Haram’s brutality, Naomi told ACN, is still fresh in her mind and it causes her to experience nightmares.
“I don’t want there to be any night-time. I wish it was always daytime. My nights are full of fear, anxiety, nightmare,” Naomi says, and adds, “I get frightened as soon as night falls.”
Similarly, Charles, a young father of a family who is 33 and a refugee in the same place, also admits to having recurrent nightmares.
He told ACN in the December 13 report, “I relive the time when we were living in hiding. Since the terrorists used to attack by night, we would get out of the town as soon as night began to fall and hide in the bush. Many nights I still dream that I’m in hiding.”
ACN reports that Charles and Naomi are now living in one of the 20 refugee camps in Borno State.
“Muslims are a majority in Borno State… but Naomi and Charles are Christians. Without their faith, many people would have not been able to endure so much suffering,” Father Christopher said.
He explained that the Islamic militants first tried to frighten and threaten the Christians, trying to force them to convert. When that failed, they began to get more violent, he said, and added, “The priests had to hide in the mountains, but the insurgents of Boko Haram continued to harass and persecute the people.”
“Eventually, the situation became so difficult that between 2015 and 2016 many people decided to pack up their belongings and leave the country, crossing the frontier and seeking refuge in Cameroon.”
Naomi recounted fleeing to Cameroon and leaving everything behind.
“It was by no means easy,” she told ACN, and added, “Our feet were swollen and blistered, and it was too much for us. My sister was captured by Boko Haram, but she had a baby in her arms and that was the only reason they let her go. It wasn’t her baby, as it happens, she was only carrying it at that moment, but it saved her life. Many other people, like my mother, were murdered.”
In Minawao, Cameroon, alone, there were at one point more than 60,000 Nigerian refugees, the charity foundation reports, and adds, “They stayed there for several years, until the Nigerian army succeeded in recapturing the towns and villages … and persuaded them to return.”
However, the situation back home in Nigeria is still very precarious, Charles tells ACN, and explains, “We were refugees in Cameroon, then we returned and have been living here for two years now, but the situation is still unsafe.”
“We are once again living in our own country, in our own area, in our beloved Pulka, but we are living as refugees. We are nearer to our home than when we were living in Cameroon, but once again we are living in danger,” Charles says.
Naomi praised Father Christopher for working selflessly to restore hope among the refugees who had lost everything in the Boko Haram attacks.
“Life in Cameroon was so difficult that we thought we would never hope again,” she said, and added, “Father Christopher is a source of inspiration for us. When we are down, he gives us courage. He is a true father to all of us and is trying to fill the gaps in our lives left by our missing family members, because many of them were murdered. He cares for us as if we were his own family.”
Naomi continues, “God is providing and helping us, thanks to so many people around the world who have not forgotten us. We pray that God may give strength to all these benefactors and that you may be able to continue doing your work and supporting us.”
According to Naomi, Christmas is a particularly difficult time for the Catholic community in Pulka.
She says, “Before the crisis, Christmas was a time of great joy, because our relatives used to come from a long way away and celebrate together with us. When the attacks began, Christmas stopped being what it had been before; we couldn’t sing Christmas carols in the community or visit other people’s houses; we couldn’t even go out of our houses at night-time. The situation was so dangerous that Christmas stopped being a festival, and we couldn’t celebrate it.”
Charles, a father of four, adds, “Celebrating Christmas is hard in our situation. Most of us who once lived in Pulka, have lost everything.”
He continues, “The Gospel gives me the strength to face all this suffering and to endure everything we confront each day. Jesus Christ foretold the suffering that we are going through. Suffering is part of being Christian. Our lives are in His hands. I am filled with hope when I remember the words of Jesus, that He will reward us at the end of our lives. Jesus Christ is my salvation, and that is what I celebrate at Christmas.”
According to Naomi, what the refugees need most, as the rest of the world celebrates Christmas, are basic necessities such as food and medication.
“What we most need here is food, tents and clothing. We are even seeing some cases of cholera now and we don’t have any place to go for medical treatment. It would also be a gift to get help with our academic studies; some of us were students before the extremist attacks, and we had to give it up because we had no money to continue,” she says.
Father Christopher says his wish for Christmas is for many people to feel the desire to help the refugees in Pulka, and for them to regain their physical, spiritual and mental health.
He says, in reference to the refugees, “They long for peace in their lives, for peace to return to their homes. Our desire is a very simple one; we simply want to live a normal life and return to the life we had before.”
ACN reports that the foundation is seeking help for a range of projects to help the “uprooted” people of Pulka, who include around 14,000 Catholics.
The envisioned ACN projects include a borehole to provide water for the refugees, the rebuilding of the St. Paul’s Parish house in Pulka, so that Father Christopher can return to live there, and help 23 Catechists who are working among the refugees from Pulka, both in Nigeria and in Cameroon.
This article first appeared on ACI Africa, CNA’s sister news agency based in Kenya.
[…]
A Pope, resistant to doctrine and the Ordinary Magisterium relative to centuries of Church Tradition, continues to turn the minor experience of a ‘synod’ into the universal importance of a Council under the guise of ‘listening to the people’ and continuing to be indifferent to Revelation and forgetting what it means to bring Souls back to Christ.
Two years instead of one, a great idea! As things now stand, synodality is all over the map in every sense of the word. Time now for a reality check by the one, hole, catholic and apostolic Church…
Yes, extended to two sessions there’s even the opportunity for Batzing to be replaced, and for a smooth replacement of the echo-chamber voices, Grech and Hollerich. And, even for a successor pope (?) to restore all of the Successors of the Apostles as something more than flip-chart “facilitators” for a congeries of interests of one color or another, or of all colors in the rainbow.
Butt, one problem is that the gangrenous German “synodal way” is also likely on a 2024 timeline. With its agenda to mainstream the homosexual lifestyle, masturbation (be inclusive!), bigamy, and priestesses. So, the fly in the ointment (double entendre intended) is the danger of some kind of plebiscite mega-surprise attached in the second year 2024—just as undefined “synodality” itself was annexed in 2018 to the very unrelated “Synod on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment.” Pin the tail on the donkey!
Still, 2024 is a good opportunity in the United States to leaven synodal listening with the 2024 National Eucharistic Conference in Indianapolis. And, of course the year 2023 must be avoided, since that will be the 30th Anniversary of Veritatis Splendor—a modernday “prisoner of the Vatican.”
Great. Another year of confusion, navel-gazing and catering to the zeitgeist.
Or maybe more time to expose the rot so we can excise it.
One can only hope. And pray.
First the synod general secretariat said that the whole-church Synod is the fruit of VATICAN II and now the Holy Father takes it further and says that it is “constitutive dimension of the Church” whereby it will help Christians “proclaim the joy of the Gospel”.
I suspect and I suggest that there is some other cause -misgiving- for the extension but a need to make it known in haste determined a badly crafted explanation.
The thing that constitutes the Church is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
“Synod” being “mentioned throughout the Council documents” refers to subsidiary activity in particular Churches.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/10/10/vaticans-synod-on-synodality-organizers-say-synod-is-fruit-of-second-vatican-council/
‘ “To know the reality of Asia, which is a vast continent starting from Kazakhstan in the far west end to Japan in the far east end, we have to immerse ourselves into the completely diverse stories of each of the 22 countries present,” Kikuchi said.
“We immediately realized that as Asia is a continent of complex realities with different cultures, it is not easy task to make one unified policy for pastoral response. Because of this realization, we understood the meaning of the last phrase of the Theme of the General Conference which is: And they went a different way,” the archbishop said. ‘
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-asia/2022/10/asian-bishops-considers-future-paths-for-church-on-continent-of-complex-realities
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-asia/2022/10/pope-urges-asian-bishops-to-count-on-laypeople-celebrate-diversity
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-oceania/2022/10/fiji-archbishop-warns-against-new-colonial-forces-in-pacific-nation
Many of the buffoons who write for that journal (which often appears as much of a journal of Catholic anti-Catholic bigotry as the bad NCR) never tire of contriving the immutable truth it is the Church’s mission to witness as an act of imperialism which requires heavy doses of moral relativism to counteract, oblivious to how this affects the destruction of life and souls. “Complex” has become the new bludgeon word for denying the reality of God’s gift of truth.
May the Father of Lights prolong and extend their discernment…indefinitely.
My sentiments exactly. Make the Synod a permanent fixture in the Church rather than torturing us with death by a thousand paper cuts.
“The Synod on Destroying Catholicism” is taking longer than originally thought.
If the China Provisional Agreement is renewed later this month on its “anniversary” October 22 and gets another 2-year period, it then coincides with the extended timeline of the “Synod”.
The FIDES article is worth reading in full I think.
‘ In the dominant representations of the relations between China and the Vatican, the factors that pushed the Holy See to follow the path it has taken, and the criteria that have guided it in its choices on questions so vital to the sensus Ecclesiae of Chinese Catholics, are generally suppressed and hidden. ‘
http://www.fides.org/en/news/72835-VATICAN_The_China_Holy_See_Agreement_and_the_treasure_of_faith
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/10/22/201022a.html
Yes, let’s twiddle our thumbs while Rome burns.
I am so done with this S on S.
I’m with Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, “VIII by a thousand cuts” (words to that effect), Oct. 17.
In the photo are 6 people that I wouldn’t entrust to be alone talking to my children, or anyone I cared about.
They oppose the apostolic faith, for instance, they oppose the Church’s moral teaching against sodomy, as stated by Eminence Hollerich, SJ.
They should be shunned, as St. Paul says about disbelievers “inside the Church.”
It’s worth noting that a full half of the Synodality leadership as shown in the photo (3 out of 6) are Jesuits. They’re not doing a very good job of hiding their takeover of the Church, are they?
Wang Libin supplies good information and, I think, analysis, in his article here at THE DIPLOMAT May 7 2022, “China-Vatican Relations in the Xi Era”; however he hasn’t disentangled the problems:
‘ The practical need to gain control, if only nominally, of China’s 12 million Catholics has conflicted with the conscientious need to condemn the CCP, making Pope Francis ambivalent about whether the two sides should sign a formal agreement on the bishop arrangement this October, when the renewed deal will expire. ‘
The problem is serial, i.e., inter-connected with one consequent on the other, etc. The Holy Father identifies “formal” relations as inferior but the Provisional Agreement has fixed faithful Catholics under the legalistic handle of the CPC inside a confusion of ideas; and placed the Holy See in a conflict between not dividing the hierarchy but dividing it. It’s one thing to identify formalism as having a danger of being empty. But are you even able to handle substantial relationships that do not have formalist expression? Do you even care to do so? Mustn’t you at least try? And mustn’t you avoid over-laying your effort with other actions that tend to neutralize it or cancel it?
Why subjugate Chinese Catholics and all Chinese with them, to the ideas of the CPC? How can you do that and in the same moment proclaim that reality is greater than ideas? Which reality is being sustained?
Following Libin’s train of thought, 4 years have passed and nothing has changed.
Then can’t it also be seen that 4 years have passed and nothing has been learned?
https://thediplomat.com/2022/05/china-vatican-relations-in-the-xi-era/
Maybe enough discernment has occurred to discern that the Holy Spirit is busy discerning and is still very confused since Francis has discerned in his many discernments that God is a God in process, a God who discerns through history, uncertain from one age to another of what is really true or not, what is really real or not, what needs to be discerned about right and wrong. After all, the Holy Spirit should not be tempted to be involved in commiting the “sin of backwardness”. Francis must be discerning that discerning is difficult for all beings, greater and lesser.
A famous saying is “ if it ain’t broke, dont fix it”. An extra year of this confused synod is nothing more than an extended opportunity to misdirect and destroy the church. The church has been mostly skidding downhill since V2 wrought so much destruction on tradition, discipline and decimated vocations. This so-called synod is on target to make it worse. Disgusted by the vapidness of the German Bishops.
https://wherepeteris.com/the-synod-on-synodality-mission-accomplished/ – a difft take on the need for the process of listening , in the trusting hope in The Spirit that it would open hearts to hear Him , to bring needed repentance too in all areas where in the enemy voice reverberates .. the decision to extend the synod for another year – ? also as reparation for a Church that has closed its ears and heart , while giving lip service if at that to the role of the Holy Father and The Catholic Church,
? effects of same manifesting in own people as hatred for life and related addictions , lust for power and money among those in authority .. Same then spilling over as wars and vindictiveness, instead of the good will to listen to own people to hear of the help needed , in how to be ‘orthodox ‘in protecting the sacredness of life and marriage ..
Good to see EWTN doing the Rosary devotion for peace in Ukraine by participating in same from Lourdes …Immaculate Conception – a blessed truth given to The Church , to prepare the children for these times of carnal flood waters .. for a deeper awareness that each life has its origin in the Giver of Life , that the noncarnal purity of same is for us through The Mother … ? the fear of that truth as the tool used by the enemy to keep even Churches that claim oneness in Truth , yet reluctant to accept same whole heartedly ..and instead find reasons to magnify perceived errors in the patient , compassionate stand of the Holy Father in his difficult role to deal with the entrenched wounds and sensitivities …the joy and enthusiasm with which the synodal process is accepted in some places to be ? the antidote for the fears and the sclerotic stubborness in other places ..instead to be young at heart, through the young too , who ‘make a mess ‘ – such as the Bl.Carlo Acutis who loved St.Francis and The Eucharist ..The endearing dialogue that St.Luke would have had with The Mother – that they likley continue in heaven , rejoicing in already beholding in the Eternal Now in the Divine Will , how the mighty have been cast down – as given in a recent talking / teaching ‘doctoring ‘ moment by the Holy Father …may The Spirit drown out and remove all dragon flood waters to help us all to heed His whisper – as His Love for the littlest to the least ..
FIAT !
What exactly is “compassionate” from the actions of a “Holy Father” who seeks to trivialize the damage done to the victims of sin through institutionalizing the process of a permanent deconstruction of the objective moral order given to us by God to where it becomes meaningless?
Personally, I’d like to see synodality extended into 2025 as well. But why stop there? Since it’s such a brilliant, stupendous idea, let’s make it perpetual. It will, thus, renew the Church every year like clockwork, long after Pope F. has sailed off into the sunset. What a legacy it will be. Eternal sodality–at least until the Kingdom comes.
Synods will continue until consensus is reached!